Valve honcho and billionaire Gabe Newell as soon as labored as a gold farmer in World of Warcraft whereas within the early analysis section of what would finally develop into Steam Workshop.
Newell opened up about his time as a gold farmer in a current interview with Edge (by way of PC Gamer), describing a interval of creating $20 an hour by aquiring and promoting gold in World of Warcraft.
“We were always used to thinking about games as entertainment experiences, but then we started thinking of them as productivity platforms,” says Newell. “As a sort of proof-of-concept, I decided to be a World of Warcraft gold farmer for a while. I was making $20 an hour farming gold. I was making what was a spectacular wage for most people in most parts of the world.”
“That’s when we started focusing heavily on things like the Steam Workshop and trying to think of everybody as a content creator.”
Steam Workshop is, in fact, Steam’s central hub for player-created content material. The hub was launched in late 2011, just a few years after the primary massive wave of gold farmers into World of Warcraft.
“[We were] trying to think of everybody as a content creator,” stated Newell.
“There’s this story of the dad and mom that referred to as us up as a result of they thought we have been promoting their children medicine. What occurred was PayPal pinged the dad and mom and stated ‘Your kid is exceeding our limits of how much money they can put into PayPal per month. They’re most likely promoting stolen items or medicine as a result of there’s no different clarification.’
“So the parents called us up and I said ‘He makes items on the Team Fortress workshop. He’s making $500,000 a year.’ That to us was an indication that this was a helpful way of thinking of games as platforms and it has informed all of our decisions about multiplayer games subsequently.”
